Carl Palmer was approached by five states seeking to lure his fast-growing company away from San Juan Capistrano. He wasn’t tempted.

“Orange County is a great place,” said Palmer, president of Seychelle Environmental Technologies, a water filter manufacturer that exports to 41 countries. “I can jump in my boat and go fishing. And, as for importing and exporting, it’s near the border and near the ports for shipping and customs.”

Companies such as Seychelle are driving robust growth in the county’s international trade. After a 14.9 percent dip during the recession, merchandise exports bounced back by 22 percent in 2010 and 20.2 percent in 2011, according to a Cal State Fullerton report released Thursday.

As a share of the county’s economy, exports jumped to 13 percent in 2011 from 9.5 percent the year before. Over the next three years, they are projected to grow at a more subdued rate of about 6.5 percent, reaching $30 billion by the end of 2014.

“We had strong growth as the global economy started to recover in 2010 and 2011,” said economist Adrian Fleissig, co-author of the report with economist Mira Farka. “But most countries are not exactly booming now. In Europe, things are not going well. Japan just went back into recession.”

Overall, Orange County’s leading trading partners are Mexico, which accounts for $5.8 billion in exports, and Canada, at $2.8 billion. The next three major destinations are in Asia: China ($2.6 billion), Japan ($2 billion) and South Korea ($1 billion).

Southern California is a booming center of international trade, due not only to its world-class ports, but also to its extensive infrastructure, large distribution and warehousing centers and huge local market.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan area ranked third in the nation in merchandise exports in 2011, behind New York-New Jersey and the Houston area. The Los Angeles area’s export growth – 16.9 percent in 2011 – lagged Orange County’s by more than 3 percent.

“International trade is an increasingly important driver of the O.C. economy,” said Wallace Walrod, an economist at the Orange County Business Council. “Export volumes have quadrupled since 1990, growing much faster than the overall O.C. economy.” He added that export growth has helped Orange County recover earlier and stronger than neighboring counties.

In recent years, the county has suffered blows to its manufacturing sector, however. Boeing, once the largest employer in Southern California, has shrunk its facilities in Anaheim and Huntington Beach. With U.S. military spending expected to decline by at least $487 billion over the next decade – and perhaps more under a “fiscal cliff” tax and spending package – the aerospace industry could suffer further cuts.

During the recession, Los Angeles and Orange counties shed 500,900 jobs in two years, of which 104,000 were manufacturing jobs. However, the economy is slowly rebounding. Unemployment has fallen to 7.2 percent in Orange County from 9.8 percent at the height of the recession.

In Orange County, high tech clusters dominate exports, according to the Cal State report. Computer and electronic products rose to $7.1 billion in 2011 from $5.9 billion the year before. The transportation equipment category ranked second, jumping to $4.2 billion from $3.6 billion. Other Orange County exports include chemical, machinery, petroleum and coal products; food; fabricated metal parts; and electrical equipment and appliances.

Hundreds of smaller companies also drive Orange County’s export economy. Unique Spectronix in Irvine employs only nine people, but it is the primary buyer of U.S. components for South Korean appliance makers Samsung and LG

Vitamin maker Boscogen, with $2 million in sales, exports 95 percent of its product to 45 countries. Founded by a Taiwan-born graduate of UC Irvine, the company employs 12 people in its Irvine plant. It just purchased new machinery and expects to double in size over the next five years, according to Vice President Lynae Chang.

A third of Boscogen’s sales are to Thailand, and the next biggest customers are Singapore and Saudi Arabia.

“They are fond of U.S.-made products because of the premium quality, the prestige and the image,” Chang said. China is the company’s next target, she added, “because they don’t trust their own products” in the wake of several contamination scandals.

Despite Japan’s downturn Seychelle, which has more than $5 million in annual sales, expects rapid growth there in the wake of the nation’s nuclear accident. The company is marketing a water bottle that filters out radioactive contaminants. Palmer said the bottle was subjected to extensive tests by University of Kyoto scientists and was found to eliminate “99.9996 percent of contaminants. They’d never seen anything like it before.”

The company has been selling water bottles and filters that remove chemicals such as arsenic and chromium, as well as organic matter. China, Australia and New Zealand are Seychelle’s biggest customers. Its products are popular in India and Africa, too. The assembly plant employs 40 people, and Palmer expects business to grow by 50 percent next year.

Margot Roosevelt covers economic news. She has been a staff reporter at the Register since 2012. Before that, she was on staff at the Los Angeles Times, covering environmental news. Earlier jobs: Congressional reporter for the Washington Post; foreign and national correspondent for Time Magazine.

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